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This paper aims to explain the path of higher education development and governance in (post-colonial) Hong Kong in light of the concept of hybridity. The paper begins with a historical review, delineating the establishment of major universities in Hong Kong, thereby illustrating how hybridity informs the trajectory of higher education development in the city. Considering the tensions and conflicts that emerged during the post-colonial transition and underlining the influences of managerialism and political activism, the paper draws on data from interviews with university council members and student leaders to outline the issues on university governance in Hong Kong. This paper argues that the response of the Chinese central government to the social unrest in the city represents a re-Sinification process that redefines the idea of the university in postcolonial Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the emergence of the new global educational governance characterized by 1) global educational reform movement, 2) the active participation of the international organizations in global educational policy making, and 3) the emerging performative culture. Against this background, this article contextualizes the East Asian Educational Model (Shanghai, Singapore, and Hong Kong) and its operation mechanism by appropriating the Confucian habitus and educational harmonization. Then this study compares the EAEM, the high performing educational system, and the representative global fourth-way countries by interrogating the underling binary—new orientalism vs. reciprocal learning. Finally, this paper draws some implications by learning from these different educational systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combined impacts of COVID-19 and global climate change are destabilising the infrastructures and future prospects of formal educational systems, with schools and universities struggling to adapt to conditions of radical precarity. At the same time, activist movements are generating alter-educational platforms that reappropriate the learning infrastructures of cities as mobile architectures of pedagogical resistance. Building on Harney and Moten's The Undercommons, this paper discusses transnational examples of radical pedagogies that engage the city as an ecology of deformalised study. We highlight examples from Melbourne's COVID-19 lockdown regime, emphasising how informal study enabled community-led responses to crisis at city-scale. We then turn to urban ecologies of study arising from contemporary activist movements, drawing connections between protest movements in Hong Kong and Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the 'war machine'. This leads to a speculative re-imagining of alternative educational values and futures within a milieu of activist study, care, and resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on Basil Bernstein's theory of pedagogic discourse and practice to explain the controversy surrounding civic education in Hong Kong, through the case of a compulsory secondary school subject called Liberal Studies (LS). The distinct advantage of a Bernsteinian approach is that its conceptual grammar cogently captures the contentious nature of LS and locates the structural autonomy of teachers. This article highlights the fragmented nature of the LS curriculum, which attests to a historical legacy of the Hong Kong education system that favours a subject-based curriculum in practice and a managerialist approach to teacher staffing. These institutional parameters exert profound influences on LS teachers' modalities of practice. This study contributes to the burgeoning interest in applying Bernsteinian scholarship to the East-Asian region by nuancing the role of teachers in mediating the contentious LS curriculum and implementing civic education. Finally, further application of the Bernsteinian approach will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how notions of race, ethnicity, and blood are mobilized in educational texts in Hong Kong. It elaborates how civic identity is racialized as part of a nationalist education operating beneath the surface of expressed commitments to global citizenship, human rights, etc., in curriculum and textbooks. Many have commented on how cultural and ethnic ties are prioritized over political principles as bases for civic education in Asian societies. These cultural/ethnic bases should be critically examined, however, as they imply racial/ethnic exclusions. Examining how race, ethnicity, and blood are used to justify cultural framings of civic identity leads to questions about how education can be used to unify some, while alienating others from a sense of belonging and community. I argue that racialization of Hong Kong civic identity is not a happy solution for all members of society, and for more inclusive visions of identity in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the representation of social values and their ontogenetic development in English as a foreign language textbooks in Hong Kong. Adopting a social semiotic approach, it considers social values in textbooks as semantic categories which are constructed by complex semiotic discursive resources, and develops an explicit framework to model what values are selected and how the values are constructed. Analysis of 19 textbooks from Primary 1 to Secondary 4–6 shows that the social values change from the personal domain (e.g. good hygiene and healthy lifestyle), through the interpersonal domain (e.g. politeness and respect), to the altruistic concern for all mankind. The result also suggests that the textbooks are more concerned with the didactic education of good citizens than with cultivating children's critical thinking. The analytical framework and the findings can be used for the explicit instruction and critical analysis of social values in English language teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to describe the Hong Kong (HK) school curriculum, especially the general curriculum for civic education and other social subjects, in relation to the political events of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, the 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident, and the return of HK's sovereignty from the United Kingdom (UK) to the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1997. This paper will argue that since 1984, the school curriculum of HK has been marked by tensions brought about by political cultures shaped by the UK and the PRC, the bureaucratic mechanisms of which are used to make sure that those curriculum contents that are judged to be politically correct are taught in school. Over the last two decades the school curriculum has been depicted as being shaped by the emergence of the nation-state and the transfer of sovereignty. Granted that political and national education forms part of the school culture, the question of how to shape students to be patriotic through the curriculum will continue to be contentious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores two current issues in the educational policies and practices of Hong Kong that have been shaped by the emergence of the nation-state and the return of Hong Kong's sovereignty from the UK to the People's Republic of China on 1 July 1997. Since this time there have been two great challenges facing music education. The first concerns how to incorporate diverse cultures, including Chinese music, into a Western-orientated music curriculum; and the second is to find a way to cultivate national identity and democracy through music education. The data presented here were collected via in-depth, semi-structured individual interviews with music teachers, school heads and assistant school heads across 40 primary and secondary schools between 2006 and 2007. The findings can be explained by referring to the shortcomings of multicultural education and the underdevelopment of democracy in Hong Kong's education system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to contribute to an understanding of principalship in Hong Kong through probing the formation and preservation of the deep leadership structures that shape its practice. Deep structures are formed partly through a dynamic relationship between constitution and culture which forms bounded "codes" of understanding, conduct and behavior which combine to shape principalship in Hong Kong and power relationships within schools and collections of schools. After providing a brief historical snapshot of Hong Kong education development since 1945, the paper explores the recent context of principalship and how this influences its shape in schools. Discussion of context focuses on the interconnected elements of constitution and traditional culture. These factors are illustrated using the issues of principal selection and teacher and parent empowerment to show the influence of deep leadership structures on the principal and the system. Depending on the perspective taken, these can be understood as either supportive or obstructive to better school leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]